The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) in Educational Research using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)

Examining School Psychologists’ Attitudes Toward Standardized Assessment Tools

“…Researchers may also include survey items to determine how social pressure (i.e., pressure to practice consistent with norms) influences school psychologists’ choices to use EBA practices. Social pressure was one area of the TPB (Ajzen, 2005; Cooper et al, 2019) that was not evaluated in either the original Jensen–Doss and Hawley (2010) study or the current study, but is understood to be a factor in maintaining low-value practices (Montini & Graham, 2015). Understanding the role of social pressure could improve training/practice by providing information about how social norms impact EBA practices among trainees and practitioners.…”

“…School psychologist’s beliefs impact their practice (Lockwood et al, 2019) and therefore understanding practitioner’ attitudes towards evidence-based assessment may also be useful in helping to train psychologists and encourage EBP (Jenson et al, 2010). One prominent model of examining beliefs that has be used to predict and change behavior is the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 2005; Cooper et al, 2019). According to TPB, intentions are antecedents of behavior that predict the amount of effort that an individual will exert in order to perform a behavior (Ajzen, 1991).…”

Advantages and Disadvantages of Modeling Beliefs by Single Item and Scale Models in the Context of the Theory of Planned Behavior

“…The theory of planned behavior is a prominent example. The theory of planned behavior [15,27] was originally developed in the context of health psychology and has increasingly been used in teacher education research during the last decades to study the relationship between teachers' beliefs and other variables related to teaching and learning [28]. This theory has been applied to a wide range of different contexts, including grammar and mathematics education [29,30], integration of technology in the classroom [31,32], inclusive education [33][34][35];), and science education [28,36,37].…”

“…The theory of planned behavior [15,27] was originally developed in the context of health psychology and has increasingly been used in teacher education research during the last decades to study the relationship between teachers' beliefs and other variables related to teaching and learning [28]. This theory has been applied to a wide range of different contexts, including grammar and mathematics education [29,30], integration of technology in the classroom [31,32], inclusive education [33][34][35];), and science education [28,36,37]. In these studies, using the theory of planned behavior contributed to the understanding that teachers' instructional decisions and classroom practices are largely influenced by psycho-social variables (i.e., factors related to a person's psychological state and social environment), which are informed by context-specific teachers' beliefs.…”

“…To model beliefs in the context of the theory of planned behavior, researchers typically apply statistical techniques, such as structural equation modeling (SEM) [12,28]. SEM serves as an umbrella term representing different techniques used to analyze the relationships among multiple variables [12,48].…”